This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Recently increased focus has been placed on reducing the volume of water used for each flush through the use of low flush volume fixtures. The use of low flush volumes with current urinals results in a reduced cleansing effect of the flush. The lower flush volume provides less water to cleanse the urinal. Further, prior art urinals utilizing a reduced volume of water provide the water to the manifold at an insufficient volume per second to achieve the desired head pressure in the manifold. In addition, the prior art flush valves provide the flush volume to the manifold via a vacuum breaker, which typically has an outlet significantly narrower than that of the manifold, requiring the water to spread horizontally in the manifold to reach those holes at the outer edges. It should be appreciated without a sufficient volume of water in the manifold such prior art systems would fail to have water drain from the holes at the outer edges, thus resulting in a small portion of the sidewall cleansed via the flush.
High efficiency fixtures present the difficulty of utilizing a plumping infrastructure that was generally designed with a much higher flush volume in mind. Thus, the use of current flush and control mechanisms with low flush volume urinals presents several problems.